Bestow Gut Love +
So today I wanted to answer a question we sometimes get about our Bestow Gut Love + powder. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this product, it is our answer to having a happy, healthy gut. It contains a wide range of ingredients that help heal and rebalance your gut.
The Bestow Gut Love + contains probiotics to help populate your gut with helpful microbes. These microbes have a protective coating to enable them to resist stomach acid and make their way down to the intestines where we want them to be. Once they are there we need to make sure they can establish themselves. So we have added prebiotics to the Bestow Gut Love + to feed and nourish them. Another great ingredient it contains is a special digestive enzyme that clears away digestive plaque. I didn’t realise until a few years ago that we can develop a thin, gooey film that lines our gut. This film acts like the plaque on our teeth, shielding bad bacteria and fungi. This digestive enzyme breaks this plaque down, exposing those harmful microbes to our immune system for removal.
The Bestow Gut Love + contains slippery elm, licorice and organic sulphur to soothe and heal the gut wall. It also contains vitamin D which we always link to bone health but is actually a vital nutrient for a healthy immune system too. Lastly, it contains loads of fibre. This is key to bowel health as the majority of our good microbes require fibre to survive. It is their main food source and from it they produce lots of amazing nutrients that we absorb to nourish our own body. This brings us to our question, “Why does the Bestow Gut Love + make my smoothie thicker?”
The reason for this is simple, it contains plenty of soluble fibre. Soluble fibre loves moisture so when it is put in liquid it absorbs all that lovely moisture and swells. This is what makes soluble fibre so good for absorbing all the toxins from our gut and helping carrying them out. It also swells in our gut causing our gut wall to expand. This distension stimulates the nerves found in our gut wall causing peristalsis. Peristalsis is the name given to the process where the muscles lining our digestive system rhythmically contract, propelling waste along the digestive tract and finally out of our bodies. So you can see just how important this type of fibre is to the health of your gut.
If you have had gut issues in the past you will be very used to taking soluble fibre as it is such a key ingredient in helping balance our gut problems. You will be used to the way your gut products increase the thickness of your drink. But if you are new to gut health products you may find this surprising.
If you don’t like your smoothies thick, one thing to be aware of is the longer you let your drink sit, the thicker it will get as that soluble fibre absorbs the moisture. So drinking your smoothie straight away is the best approach to avoid it thickening.
Also make sure you aren’t adding too much. We recommend a tablespoon but the tablespoons we have in our cutlery drawer tend to be huge so make sure you are using a level measuring spoon and level it off with a knife. This doesn’t mean you have to do this every day, after a short time you will get used to how much you should be using and you will be able to measure it visually pretty accurately.
Secondly, if even the level measuring spoon is too much, reduce the dosage. It took me years to understand that there is no optimum dosage we can recommend for all people. David, who formulates the products for us, always has a little chuckle when I ask him to give me a dosage to put on the labels. He says “that’s like asking me how much broccoli you should eat, Janine. There is no perfect amount that is going to suit everybody. It is so bio-individual.” Ah! I never wanted to hear that because everyone asks for a dosage. But the lesson here is that the dosage is actually fluid. Experiment to see what suits you. So if you find it is thickening your drink too much for your taste, just reduce down the dosage. It is better you are taking it and upping your fibre intake than not having it at all.
Just so you are aware, the Bestow Gut Love + also contains insoluble fibre. This type of fibre doesn’t absorb moisture and acts more like a soft brush, cleaning along the gut wall. Insoluble fibre also helps stimulate elimination and can be very helpful for those clients that can suffer from constipation.
It is really important for any true gut health product to contain both types of fibre as both have very different jobs in our digestive system and are therefore both essential to the wellbeing of our gut.
So why not give it a try and see what the Bestow Gut Love + can do for you.
– Janine Tait, Bestow Founder.
